Train accident

     A long, continuous train horn. Unbroken. Wehrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.... 
     "That's a person," I said to my wife.
     Meaning, the only reason an engineer lays on the horn like that is someone on the tracks.
     Suicide, most likely. At least I hoped it was. The only thing worse than jumping in front of a train, intentionally, is to be blundering along, earpods screwed in, chatting on your iPhone, look up and think, "Shit a train," and bam it's over.

     Besides, most are suicides. There is that subtle hint of the ringing bells and flashing lights and lowered gates to help even the most careless avoid accidents.
     I live one block from the Northbrook Metra station. Quite intentionally. When we bought this house, nearly a quarter century ago, I wanted to live by public transportation so I could go into work without driving. Driving sucks. At least city driving. If I need to drive north, to Wisconsin, or west, to Iowa, I'm all for that. Coffee, tunes, the semi-open road.

      We can see the tracks from our dining room window. 
     Of course we thought about the noise. Those train horns. The clanging bells. And, such as Monday night, the ambulance and fire trucks that quickly arrived on the scene. I gazed uneasily out the living room window at the strobing lights. Some poor person...
     We were smart. Before we bought the house, we sat in what would be the master bedroom and waited. A train came by — a sort of gentle whoosh. We decided that we could live with that. Then we moved in, and the first freight came by, rattling the century-old windows in their dry frames. You get used to it.
     I'd taken the train downtown Monday to have lunch with a reader and his wife who bought the experience at a charity auction. They live in Kenosha. I told them, rather than go all the way into the city, we could meet at Prairie Grass —run by Sarah Stegner, the former chef of the Ritz Carlton dining room. I tried to tempt them with pie. Door County Sour Cherry. Coconut Creme. Pumpkin.
     But they wanted the full Chicago experience. So I suggested Harry Caray's on Kinzie, my go-to restaurant showing off the city. That lovely little Dutch revival building that somehow survived the ravages of time. The walls, a museum of memorabilia. It doesn't hurt that there is a photo of my younger son, on the mound at Wrigley Field, throwing out the first pitch at the Cubs/Sox game on the 3rd of July. A frozen rope to the catcher.
     Why would anyone jump in front of a train? I know the answer. Despair and sorrow and sadness and hopelessness and mental illness and addiction. Lost romance, lost job, lost hope, just plain lost. A permanent solution to a temporary problem.
     The devastated loved ones of those who perish under the train often put little white crosses and plastic flowers on the spot where the death occurred, and Metra leaves them for a polite period, sometimes for a good long while, to bleach in the sun and become faded and pitious. One, just off the platform by a tree, lingered for years, and I would eye it uneasily waiting for a train. Maybe even with a trace of annoyance — I'm sorry for your personal tragedy, but it's sobering enough to be going to a depopulated downtown to attend some meeting you could as easily conduct on Zoom or never at all. Must I consider your tragedy too? A petty thought, but you have to be who you are. It isn't very much to ask. Pause to remember this person was here.
     Monday night, the commotion lasted for a couple hours. Emergency trucks coming and going, other trains blasting their horns, loud and long, as they inched past what I assumed were recovery efforts. What I think of as, "picking someone up with a tweezers."

     Only it wasn't that. I checked the news the next day. Not a suicide — a 23-year old woman, running across the tracks. Taken to Evanston Hospital. Condition unknown.
     Running across the tracks. Jesus F. Christ. It mystifies me. Where are they going? Monday, when I returned from downtown, I got off the train, crossed Shermer, and tucked myself behind the crossing gate. Everyone else, getting off the train, stayed between the gate and the train, the better to surge across the tracks when the train pulls away. Timing their bolt from the blots so they're in motion even before the stainless steel wall of the train has removed itself. Which can be a problem if there is a train coming the other way. I've seen people start, then dance back as a train passes the other direction.
     A cautious move, on my part, to wait behind the gate. Habit. When we moved here, the boys were 3 and 4, and I realized the best way to inculcate train safety in them is to do it myself. It's very hard to be hit by a train if remain behind the gate until it raises up.
     This is not to criticize the young lady, whom I hope is alright. Maybe she was just grazed. That's unlikely. Usually, you get hit by a train, you know it. Maybe she'll reach out when she gets out of the hospital, and can tell us where she was going in such a hurry. Though I wouldn't expect that. It's got to be embarrassing, to be so careless. It's got to add insult to injury.

Should America care about felons?

     This was over 1,200 words long when I finished the first draft Tuesday morning. Cutting it to size required loss of this bit of promotion I had wanted to tuck at the end. If, after reading this, you would like to hear Ben Austen speak, and are free tonight, he will be discussing his book Wednesday, Feb. 21 at 6 p.m. at the Northwestern University School of Law, Strawn Hall, 375 E. Chicago Ave. Admission is free, but you need to register.

     "Vindicta" is Latin for vengeance — payback for wrongs others have done.
     Or wrongs you imagine they've done. Or might do.
     Look around. We are in the golden age of vindictiveness. It's the thread that holds everything together, the hidden hand. The only questions: Who is the object of retribution this week? Who can we safely hurt?
     Nearly a decade ago, when Donald Trump went down that escalator, vindictiveness was directed against Mexicans (rapists) and Muslims (terrorists). We were building the Wall and banning immigrants from Muslim countries. Trump was elected president on that platform and might yet be again.
     Like fashion, the specific objects of our scorn change with the seasons. Now Mexicans and Muslims are out, more or less, and Venezuelans (too many) and trans people (predators) are in.
     In a pinch, there's always criminals.
     You don't need Trump to tell you to disdain felons. That's the default. The United States incarcerates nearly 2 million people, more than China, four times our population. The U.S. is the world's top jailer — our incarceration rate is 531 per 100,000, nearly double the 300 of Russia. Canada's is 85.
     Our country is in such peril right now that I'm reluctant to bring up a another concern. But when you consider our problem as one of general vindictiveness — the urge to punish driving our political nightmare — the fate of prisoners becomes very relevant.

     Particularly after reading "Correction: Parole, Prison and the Possibility of Change" by Ben Austen, a compelling, well-reasoned book that looks at incarceration in Illinois through two longtime prisoners.
     First, Michael Henderson, who borrowed a .38-caliber snub-nosed revolver and shot a fellow teen outside a bar in East St. Louis in the summer of 1971.
     Then 18, Henderson was offered a deal — plead guilty, and be sentenced to 7 to 21 years. He declined, was convicted, and sentenced to 102 years.
     Second, Johnnie Veal, convicted of gunning down two policemen in Cabrini-Green in 1970. The notorious murder of Sgt. James Severin and Officer Anthony Rizzato shocked the city. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, but Veal was a Cobra Stone, and several rival gang members fingered him. He was sentenced to 100 to 199 years in prison
     Both men were sentenced before 1978, when sentences still could be adjusted by a parole board. Austen focuses on this dwindling population of men who have been in jail for decades and are offered the carrot of release, as a goad to self-improvement, while that decision rests with parole boards, often staffed with retired cops and prosecutors more interested in regurgitating the details of a crime than considering any improvements in the criminal over the past 20 or 30 or 40 years.

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Today in cat news

Casper

     Riddle: they're in our house, but are not ours. We care for them, a lot, while they care for us not at all.
     What are they? Cats, of course. Who are they? Casper and Boo, in this instance, and they are not our cats, beyond the truth that cats never really belong to anyone, but also because they are our younger son's cats, temporarily relocated to our home while he travels doing important legal stuff.

Natasha

     Which gives us three cats, at the moment, including Natasha, the 14-year-old queen of the roost. The younger pair do not bother her, at least not while we're watching. She is slow, quiet, shrinking into herself — 14 years old is getting up there — and we worry about her. She often seems somewhat stunned, lost in her own interior thought, ignoring the treat under her nose.

     Casper is pure black with a patch of white on his chest. He is a high trajectory cat, shooting through the house, pinballing from room to room, up the walls, across the ceiling. Or so it seems. 

     Boo is the opposite. Stasis in feline form. Lassitude. Inertia. Boo will spend hours in my son's closet. Just ... being ... Boo. She looks like a cow that's been transformed into a cat form by a witch's curse — a tiny head, the size of a ping pong ball, on an enormous body. No tail, which we originally thought of was due to some mishap, but now seems to be a quality of the breed, though I'm not sure which one that is: the Mini-Holstein Hippocat, perhaps. 

     Boo actually cares for us very much — for me anyway. A quality I admire in any creature. I'll be writing away and she'll pad into my office and hurl herself onto my lap, sometimes with the help of her needle claws. Which complexifies the writing process, having to reach over and/or around this dozen-pound lump of thrumming fur. What choice have I? It isn't as if I can move her — that would be ungrateful, maybe even bad form. So I stop writing and stroke her. I like the affection. In fact, when the cats were delivered, I couldn't help informing my future-daughter-in-law that dropping Boo off was a lot easier than getting her back will be. She might need a court order. 

     In the past — yes, we've done this before — we insisted on claw covers, or their nails being trimmed. There was no time for that this visit. The cats were nearly flung at us. I reacted to the change in my typical fashion — by complaining, pointing out the claw-sized divots in the edge of the Shaker hutch — Casper's work. Boo would sooner sink into the ground and vanish than climb anywhere. Though even as I complain part of me realizes that someday these claw marks will be valued souvenirs of their sojourn here.

      My wife, using that Actually-Do-Something-About-The-Problem superpower of hers, ordered the above scratching post. Assembling it, I noted that it was impossibly high — showing I can be as slow to process information as anybody, since I've seen Casper leap atop refrigerators — and that Casper would never access its topmost portion. Which he did immediately, as soon as I set the thing out, as a reproach, the "Hey Idiot Look at This!" being unvoiced. At least I had the presence of mind to snap a photo.

Boo

Robots rise up? Relax, Chicago, it's not Skynet — yet

 

     Hey, Windy City. Steinberg here, with a word about our new neighbors: the robots. Yeah, I'm talking AI. Artificial intelligence. All the sci-fi buzzwords that used to belong to Isaac Asimov and now clog your Twitter feed.

     Does that sound like my voice? Kill me now. I fed Google's Gemini AI software with this prompt: "Write a column defending the use of Artificial intelligence in the style of Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times." This snappy patter came out. In seconds. I present it uncut and unedited.

      Look, I get the jitters. We Chicagoans built our skyline on steel and sweat, not algorithms. We like things tangible, like hot dogs with neon relish and politicians with even brighter ties. But before you fire up the tinfoil hats over robot overlords, let's take a deep breath and a Malört shot for clarity.

     Yes, I'd die before I'd deploy the hot dog cliche or recommend Malört for any purpose other than removing rust. But it's definitely in the ballpark. Short, punchy sentences. A certain swagger.

     Here's the deal: AI ain't stealing your job, unless your job is playing checkers with pigeons in Millennium Park. (No offense, pigeon pals.) This ain't about replacing humans, it's about making humans better. Like, say, diagnosing diseases faster, designing earthquake-proof buildings, or finally deciphering Ald. Burke's budget proposals. (Seriously, those things are hieroglyphics.)

     That's not true — lies are a feature, not a flaw of AI. Millions of jobs will vanish — in administration, law, research, writing. Many current white collar jobs won't exist in 20 years. It's already happening.

    Think of it like a fancy new tool at the hardware store. You wouldn't ditch your hammer for a robot arm just to hang a picture, right? But for building a skyscraper, having that extra robotic muscle, that precision and power, might come in handy.

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Jack Higgins drew from the heart of Chicago

     His reputation preceded him. Long before I set eyes on Jack Higgins, the man, I knew of the gifted editorial cartoonist who, for some unfathomable reason, was stuck drawing for the Daily Northwestern.
     Actually, we all knew the reason: Jack was knocking at a barred door. Editorial cartoonist jobs were scarce even in 1978, the year Jack joined the Daily. The Chicago Tribune had Dick Locher and would soon add Jeff MacNelly — syndicated in almost 1,000 newspapers and drawing the popular comic "Shoe." And the Sun-Times had even better — Bill Mauldin, the World War II legend with two Pulitzer Prizes, plus John Fischetti.
     So where was Jack supposed to go? He couldn't leave Chicago — the son and grandson of Chicago cops, he had Chicago politics, like art, in his blood. So work for a tiny student paper at a suburban college he didn't himself attend? Sure!

     "He was a mensch," remembered Robert Leighton, Jack's editor at the Daily, now a veteran cartoonist for The New Yorker. "He was a sweet, sweet guy. He taught me how to draw clothing on people. He said you have his arm going up and the lines on his shirt going down."

     That was Jack. Helpful. Good-natured enough to take orders from kids. Not that he'd be drawing for a student newspaper long — by 1981, he was freelancing for the Sun-Times. He joined the staff in 1984; two years later, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, which he won in 1989.
     Like all the greats, Jack loved what he did. It wasn't a job but a calling, like being a priest.
     "Jack found politicians and their antics endlessly amusing," said his wife, Missy. "He tried to be a voice for the citizens of Chicago who had no voice and had a great feel for the regular working people, across many classes, in Chicago. He sensed their resentments, sadnesses and outrages, but, when he found something just plain ridiculous, he reveled in it."
     Jack was the last of a breed going back to Thomas Nast, who brought down New York's Boss Tweed singlehandedly. Editorial cartoonists were once household names drawing unforgettable images — Herblock at the Washington Post, having Nixon arrive at a campaign rally by crawling out of a sewer. "Here he comes now!" an enthusiastic supporter cries. Mauldin, at the Sun-Times, depicting the statue at Lincoln Memorial, face buried in his hands, weeping at the death of John F. Kennedy. No words needed. Just the perfect drawing.

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In the 1981 parody issue of the Daily Northwestern, produced by the school's humor magazine,
cartoonist Robert Leighton, imitating Jack's already distinct style, poked fun at him for drawing
for a student newspaper.

Flashback 2010: No more wigs, but 'Candide' still relevant

     Off to the Goodman Theater tonight to see Mary Zimmerman's "The Matchbox Magic Flute." Which made me think of the last time I saw a production directed by my fellow Wildcat and former classmate. 

     That was "Candide," 14 years ago, so I thought I'd share this account of that performance. How I wrote about it without mentioning Candide's optimistic blurt that this was "the best of all possible worlds" — a parody of Leibniz — is something of a mystery. 

     If I had to point to one single historical episode to explain the entire human condition, I would highlight the little-known fact that a number of survivors of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945, fled to Nagasaki in time for the second bomb dropped three days later.
     This out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire quality, so horrible that it becomes comic — at least when happening long ago to people far away whom you don't know — flashed as I sat in the Goodman Theatre Monday for opening night of "Candide."
    Leonard Bernstein's 54-year-old musical version of Voltaire's 250-year-old satire should not feel current. But something about its deep cynicism, its chain of self-interested rogues, puffed up rulers and luckless victims, makes it perfect for these times, when we stumble from natural disaster to pointless bloodletting to political upheaval. The randy Jesuits Voltaire parodies, well, let's say they did not have the dust of the ages upon them.
     I loved it.
     Then again, I'm an odd mix of deep cynicism and childlike innocence. I enjoyed the way the play's characters were casually butchered, its cities destroyed, sailors drowned, maidens defiled, all with director Mary Zimmerman's full palette of cute theatrical devices — ships on sticks, stoic red toy sheep, ribbons as blood — sugar-coating the three hours of musical mayhem. How many plays are there where the line "Throw the Jew into a ditch" draws a hearty laugh from the audience?
     For those unfamiliar with the story, Candide is a pleasant young simpleton who gets evicted from the idyllic palace where he was raised. He's forced to wander our world of endless outrage, misery and atrocity, searching for his lost love, Miss Cunegonde (played with show-stealing zest by Lauren Molina).
     No experience, no matter how awful, blunts Candide's optimism — I hate to say it, but he is very Barack Obama-ish in his tendency to place his trust in obvious enemies and his reluctance to let a steady rain of betrayals dampen his worldview.

'A CHAIN OF ASTONISHING CALAMITIES!'

     The music, alas, is not memorable. Bernstein wrote it, but "West Side Story" this ain't. Though when you have lyrics like "What a day for an auto de fe!" who cares about melody? Several of my associates, more experienced theatergoers than myself, complained that Zimmerman's bag of stage tricks has grown stale, so maybe enjoyment reveals a Candide-like naivete on my part. But how could you not love a musical with a number celebrating the transmission of venereal disease, sung by a character with a silver nose? ("Untreated syphilis destroys the cartilage in your nose," I explained to my 14-year-old, eager to show off knowledge that I never thought I'd have the chance to use. "People really did wear those noses.")
     That either intrigues or repels you. Now that every new musical seems designed to help 12-year-olds feel good about themselves, it's bracing to be reminded that theater used to be something adults did to make our scary world seem less so.
     A few who fled Hiroshima to Nagasaki survived both, by the way, living to face life's fresh horrors. Which is the message of the play. You survive; well, some do.

           — Originally published in the Sun-Times, September 29, 2010

Flashback 2006: Sometimes, the denial is worse than the charge

Perseus with the Head of Medusa, by Antonio Canova (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

    No column in the paper today — an editor asked me to instead write something Sunday  about my late colleague, Jack Higgins. 

    In the meantime, Facebook served this up as a memory Thursday, and I thought, "I must have already posted that." But no. It's too fun not to. Yes, sad that Jesse Jackson Jr. was lost to mental illness and prison. But that was in the future when I wrote this column, a reminder that columnists used to throw their elbows a little harder than we do today. (If there even is a "we." Some days it feels like it's just a "me.")

OPENING SHOT

     A classic tale from the colorful career of Lyndon B. Johnson gives politicians of today nearly all they need to know about dealing with abuse.
     The late, great Hunter S. Thompson, of all people, tells a publishable version:
     "Back in 1948, during his first race for the U.S. Senate, Lyndon Johnson was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go. He was sunk in despair. He was desperate. And it was just before noon on a Monday, they say, when he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference for just before lunch on a slow news day and accuse his high-riding opponent, a pig farmer, of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children.
     "His campaign manager was shocked. 'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he supposedly said. 'You know it's not true.'
     "'Of course it's not true!' Johnson barked at him. 'But let's make the bastard deny it!' ''

I'M NOT DUMB !!! I'M NOT! REALLY!

     When the first smirking colleague passed along a letter purporting to be from Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., I thought it was a joke.
     "You wrote this yourself, didn't you?" I accused. He swore it was legit.
     Could it be? Was the congressman really denying being dumb ? And at such length. He mentions the word "dumb" seven times: dumb , dumb , dumb , dumb , dumb , dumb , dumb.
And the amazing thing is, I never called him " dumb ," not directly. What I said was that he "isn't very bright" — a premise that he amply illustrates below.
     Just to assure you that this isn't some kind of elaborate parody — a fantasy sequence – I should say I spoke directly to Jackson 's press secretary, Frank E. Watkins, and he assures me, albeit a bit frostily, that the congressman did indeed pen the letter.
     But enough preliminaries. Let me step aside and present Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., in his own words. He writes:
     "Neil Steinberg says he doesn't like me . . ."
     Actually, I never said that either. The fact is, I do like him. A lot. It's the Jesse Jackson Jr.'s of the world that make my life a bed of ease.
     ". . . because he has a bias that I'm not very smart. Note that he doesn't just say my ideas are dumb , but that I am dumb . . ."
     What I actually said was that Mayor Daley "isn't dumb " — which is also true. He sure didn't write me a long, aggrieved, self-indicting defense. The man's too smart for that.
     ". . . a very personal and subjective view without a factual basis. The last time I checked they don't award college, seminary, law and honorary degrees to dumb people."
     That's the dumbest — now I am using the word — part of the entire letter. I graduated from Northwestern University and, trust me, they slapped degrees upon some world-class idiots. Not to single out NU — I think anyone who ever attended any college, seminary or law school anywhere would heartily agree. With the exception of Jackson , that is.
     "Steinberg says I'm dumb because I've offered an amendment to the Constitution that would provide all American students with a 'public education of equal high quality . . ."
     The key weasel word here is "provide." If I thought Jackson's amendment had a chance to provide anybody anything, except perhaps a cynical chuckle, I'd be all for it. But it wouldn't. How could it help? Right now parents allow their own children to fail in school, even though it dooms them, hurts the economy, raises crime, drug use and a raft of social woes — if that isn't inspiration enough to make school work better, then what's a constitutional amendment going to do? Nada.
     "It's not a dumb idea to put one of our basic beliefs into our most important legal document — that every child in America has the right to a public education of equal high quality."
     Window dressing. Product placement. Chin music. How could kids across the country have a "right" to an equal high quality education when kids in the same school, even in the same room, don't get an equal education? It's impossible.
     "He says such an amendment would be a 'waste of time and make the Constitution a place for meaningless symbolism.' That's like saying the phrase 'shall provide for the common defense' is merely symbolic when it just resulted in a 2006 Defense Department appropriation of $453 billion . . ."
     Well, he prattles on from there, but you get the idea. Bottom line is: He stands by his charmed notion that a constitutional amendment would somehow fix our broken schools. Why stop there? The biggest problem in our schools — as any teacher will tell you — is not money, but parents who don't care. Why not get a constitutional amendment to fix that? A line demanding that parents love their children and take an active interest in their education. Jackson could call it "The loving parents amendment." And obesity. With fat kids being such a problem, why not tuck in a line that all children have a right to be healthy and of moderate weight. Why not put that in the Constitution, too?
     Because it would be . . . no, no, I won't say it.

BUT WAIT, IT GETS BETTER . . .

     Then, as if holding some kind of master class on ham-handedness, Jackson proceeds to send the offending column out to everybody he knows, begging them to support him (perhaps he sensed that, prior to his plea, I didn't receive a single communication backing the congressman. Not one).
     This provoked a mighty trickle of confused, automatic support — and quite a bit of name calling, which always helps one's case — as well as e-mails such as the following:
     "When I got an email from Jessie Jr. soliciting an attack on you I knew you must have been right on target. Bravo."
     Which should explain to my colleagues the hoots of laughter that have been echoing out of my office all day.

            — Originally published in the Sun-Times, January 11, 2006